Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

Standard workflow in Brazil:

- You need to buy something from person XZ, whether an individual, small business, or huge business.

- XZ sends you an invoice (including relevant taxes).

- You pay the invoice. XZ knows you’ve paid.

- At year end you can download all your invoices, including any taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make American taxation look simple.)

Standard workflow in America:

- “Do you want cash, mail a check, or PayPal/Venmo/Cashapp?”

- “Umm do PayPal but friends and family please… also it’s at my wife’s email that still has her maiden name”

- Zero detail on invoice (maybe a receipt printed on thermal paper or a random email) which you lose by tax time

Standard workflow in Poland for normal people:

- You buy something and pay the stated price with money, phone/card or "blik" (free cashapp).

- Your taxes are already prefilled by your employer. If you have some "tax relief" items, you add it on webpage and make some clicks to confirm. If no reliefs, you don't need to do anything.

- At year end you can download all your invoices, including any taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make American taxation look simple.)

I disagree, although it is VERY complex the US system is much worse. At least the Brazillian one you don't need to pay for an application (TurboTax & similars) to file your taxes.

And the Receita (IRS) app has an option to pre-fill the tax declaration form, which works wonders most of the times. It requires a manual review to certify that everything is correct, but from the times I had to declare my taxes (I'm living abroad so I don't have to do it anymore), it was as easy as loading the pre-filled details and just verifying if everything was correct.

This is misleading and borderline false.

Most people don't have to do much during tax season nor keep any receipts. You download the declarations of your bank, receive one from your work. Fill them out on a free software and you're done in 15min.

Only gets somewhat complicated If you have lots of deductibles and you have to prove them, that's the same everywhere.